[Translators’ Notes] Rapper Car with MC Sniper

Rapper Car is the latest web series by AKATV in which Kjun invites rappers for a drive with talking and live rapping. The second two episodes feature MC Sniper and are now available with our English subtitles. Read on for all the details!

Kjun and MC Sniper talk music, marriage, Outsider, and are later joined by former SMTM contestant SongRapper of $niper$ound.

Episodes and Translators’ Notes

Episode 1/2

MC Sniper has coined the term ‘Goguryeo hiphop‘ with his second album ‘초행 (初行)’ (First Trip). It is not really clear what the term refers to, but MC Sniper has mentioned before during HiphopLE’s Talk Concert that after having made so much reggae music with BK and Skull, he had a ‘Korean’ phase as it was the trend at that time to include traditional Korean instruments into the music (he mentions Defconn and Onesun doing so) to create a Korean sound, i.e. Korean hiphop.

MC Sniper cracks some “ajusshi gags” (아재 개그, ajae gag), i.e. old men’s gags, which is slang for lame jokes. When talking about Goguryeo hiphop, he says: “It failed, I totally went to Goguryeo,” and “Worse, I could have gone to Mongolia,” using the time distance as metaphor for how much it failed, a bit similar to saying “it went downhill” or “it went down the drain.”

The second track is ‘사랑했잖아 (Feat. Loco, 손승연)‘ which MC Sniper performed on the first season of SMTM. It is a remake of LYn’s R&B track ‘사랑했잖아‘ (But We Were in Love). (You might have noticed, but the lyrics translations in the subtitles are very condensed as the rap is way too fast.)

You can listen to MC Sniper’s ‘자메이카 보이’ (Jamaica Boy)here. It’s a reggae/old school track off his first album ‘So Sniper…‘.

The first track by SongRapper is ‘That Girl (Feat. Loco, Crybaby)‘. Kjun misunderstood the title as ‘대꾸리’ (read like: “that goory”) which refers to large quantities of soju. He says that MC Sniper being the root of Goguryeo hiphop lead him to think that the song was about drinking, because “[c]ommon pastimes among Goguryeo people were drinking, singing, or dancing.” (*)

When MC Sniper says, “He (SongRapper) should have died from it!” he is making another joke. The word ‘gold-digger‘ in Korean is ‘꽃뱀’ (kkotbaem), literally a type of snake. MC Sniper actually says “He should have died from the (snake) bite!” but of course he does not mean it that way, he was just trying to crack another joke.